What I learned in 2007

This is a little late, but I’ve been playing beginning of the year catch up. I believe that its important to do this kind of self-reflection at the end of every year.

I don’t miss working with Sharepoint -No, really, I don’t.

I lot of patience with change goes a long way – I have to constantly remind myself that change and getting people to adopt to change doesn’t happen overnight.

I need to get out more – working from home has made me sort of a hermit. There are some days when I feel a little more Boo Radleyish than others. The holidays was hard because other than my immediate family I didn’t really talk to other human beings.

I need to find more new friends or acquaintances – I started interacting more with social networking sites in our ‘profession’ on the web. I’v just started dabbling but I need to engage more. I find that being exposed to people who are more open to technological advances in learning actually re-inspires me and keeps me going when I feel down.

Things I want to do more this year:

• Go to the actual library – I’ve been hearing that libraries are becoming pretty interesting places to hang out. Seems like many librarians are on the up and up when it comes to employing 2.0 technologies.
• Start a podcast – not sure what it will be about yet…  I was thinking of doing a knitting through history/comedy podcast. I know that doesn’t sound fun to most people, but i’ve been thinking about tinkering around with podcasting more.
• Volunteer more at my local public school – I need to get started back with volunteering for the SMART program. I’ve done it in the past and it’s great fun. Plus, the kids are wonderful to work with
• Don’t spend as much time on the internet – Do you think I have a theme running here? Get out, meet people, don’t always have your eyes pasted on a screen.

Invasion of the Video Mashup

An internet video mashup is just a re-mix of of video and audio content which is shared on the web.

Future tense has a great brief podcast on the trends of video mashups (1/3/2008). Notably it features the idea that much of the re-mix of content from films and music may eligible for ‘fair use‘ law protection. This makes sense since re-mixing content to express a new or different interpretation doesn’t mean that people are using the content as it is for ones own gain. This is a potentially touchy topic because on one hand we want people to re-mix and re-interpret content because it facillitates change and progress; on the other hand, taking and using content from those who worked hard to create it doesn’t seem right if someone else profits from it. Though I doubt that anyone has made any money re-mixing Soprano episodes.

Though I wonder how many legal departments and copyright lawyers must have their wheels running on overdrive right now trying to figure out how to nip this movement in the bud. Is it too late to do that? Large numbers of teens have made re-mixing of content to their own interpretations a way of life. This is simply how they react to the content they see. I think it’s exciting… because you can interact with this content in ways that you could not in the past.*What does this mean for copyright law in the future?